Steffi

Heavy, idiosyncratic, caught between shelf and wall – Rainer Grilberger’s artist’s book Steffi is not merely a book but a sculpture. Encased in sheet steel and fitted with thermoformed acrylic glass, it unfolds as an object that can shift between lying, hanging, and standing. Its point of departure is a steel sphere – a sculpture that sank into Pleschinger Lake near Linz in December 2019 and was recovered a year later by divers together with Noële Ody. Covered in rust, algae, and deposits, it resurfaces: as a transformed body, as an image, as a narrative. The publication documents this process of creation, disappearance, and return. Photographs, video stills, and precise captions trace the chronology of a sculpture whose form and meaning continuously shift in the tension between painting, relief, and object. The artist’s book is both a continuation of the Relief Relief series and a work in its own right. It weaves together references – from pop-cultural finds such as Daisy and Donald Duck: Von Kunst keinen Dunst to exhibition contexts in Linz (EFES 42), Vienna (Belvedere 21, ES49), and beyond – revealing how a sculpture reappears not only physically but also across different spaces and times. Published as Edition Kunstuniversität Linz, Volume 3, in cooperation with Verlag für moderne Kunst, the book is part of a series conceived by artists of the University of Arts Linz, realized with a distinctive, reflective approach to the medium of the book. An object between documentation and sculpture, between materiality and fiction – heavy and at the same time fleeting like the surface of water.